


Diving Off The Balcony

by inlovewithnight



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set during "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Diving Off The Balcony

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen."

When they leave the hospital, it seems as if they should be stepping into colder, brighter air, or a wave of noise that will break over their heads and snap them back into their lives. There should be something that stings and makes them hit the ground running at their accustomed frenetic pace, a reassurance that the quiet, motionless space of the waiting room was indeed unreal.

Instead they step into silence, the acoustics of the building turning the space that the police have closed off into an eerie dead zone. The air is heavy and thick, muggy as August. Toby thinks about saying that out loud, trying to gently prod Sam into a rage over global warming. Make Sam raise his voice, raise his pulse, shake off the layer of fear and exhaustion that's settled over them both like dust.

He says nothing. Sam is pale around the nose and his eyes are fixed on the pavement six feet away. He's somewhere else entirely, and raising his pulse might break more than the metaphorical dust.

Toby touches Sam's arm lightly, guides him down the narrow space to the police barricade and the street. His fingers settle where Sam's shirt clings to the curve of his elbow, the fabric gone limp and damp, the crispness with which it started the day killed by hours and flop sweat.

He edits his own thoughts, instantly and instinctively as when he's composing Bartlet's words in the grim cave of his office while the ball smacks steadily from the floor to the wall and back to his hand. Not _killed_. Strike the word. Purge the memory of it from the draft. The fabric is not dead, it is only resting. There is no death here, only a pause before...before...

"Where are we going?" Sam asks, and stops, leaving Toby's hand to slide along his sleeve and fall back to his own side. He tucks it into his pocket, suddenly conscious of the weight of it, its physical presence, the sense-memory of body heat against the tips of his fingers. "Toby? Where are we going, anyway?"

"Back to the office, I suppose." He moves to run his free hand through his hair, hesitating with his fingers hovering over his forehead like someone attempting mind-reading in a bad science fiction movie. He feels abruptly, inexplicably, off-balance.

"I don't want to go back to the office." Sam laughs and Toby shoves the other hand into its pocket as well, curling his fingers against the lining of his slacks, unhappily conscious of every millimeter of his own skin. "I know I just said I did, back inside, but I...really don't want to."

"We need to get back." Toby wants his voice to sound stronger to his own ears, more certain, more full of bluster and aggression and damn-the-torpedoes arrogance. Hearing even one of those things would go a long way to convincing him that he is himself. "We have a lot to do."

"I don't know that we'd do much good," Sam says, his voice careful and deliberate. Toby knows the tone; Sam is editing himself, too, feeling his way through a maze of words and trying to come out the other side with a delicate latticework structure that can look like a bulwark when put in the right lighting and presented through a microphone by the President in full voice. Toby knows that Sam is doing this, the same on-the-fly illusion-making that Toby himself is striving for, because Toby taught him how to do it. Sam learns fast, and thoroughly. Toby used to tell him that was the reason he hadn't been fired yet, before the tacit, universal acknowledgment that none of them would ever be fired for anything less than high treason or electoral votes.

"I think we're in shock," Sam says, in that same voice, earnest and careful and precise. Toby blinks and turns to face him, frowning, on the verge of a question, but Sam cuts him off with a shake of his head. "I'm pretty sure we are, actually. So I don't think we would be very useful at the office. Not for a little while, anyway."

"Should we go back in the hospital, then?" Now his voice sounds stronger, only it's mixed with too much sharpness, still not right. "Where else exactly do we have to go?"

"I'd like to sit down." Toby's first impulse is to round on him, shout, verbally knock him back for such a non-sequitur. The look on Sam's face stops him. Too pale, too bewildered, too...shocked, yes, fine.

"You live closer," he says, fitting his fingers into the crook of Sam's elbow again and tugging him toward the barricade and the sidewalk, where there's a milling crowd of people, gawking and praying and shouting and taking up too much space, displacing air that feels like it's forcing itself down Toby's throat looking for somewhere to go.

On the other side of the people, though, there are cabs, a means of transport away from here and toward somewhere quiet, and shadowed, and possessed of ice water, or alcohol, or in the best of all possible worlds, both.  
**  
Sam's apartment is exactly and not at all what Toby expects. There are irritatingly healthy cereals and bagels and _fruit_, G-d help him, lined up on the counter with excessive precision. But there's also laundry on the floor, creeping from the bedroom doorway in the manner of things that curl around ankles and get dragged along until kicked into submission. Toby is familiar with the pattern.

It occurs to him a minute later than it ordinarily would that possibly the reason the kitchen is so neat is that it doesn't get disturbed as often as one might think. The ratio of mornings when they arrive at the office on time to those when they come racing or staggering in on another schedule entirely is...variable.

"Do you want anything?" Sam asks, following his gaze to the kitchen. "There's...I don't know. Juice. Water. Vodka."

"I wouldn't have pegged you for a vodka guy."

"What would your prediction have been?"

Toby shrugs, watching dust motes pas-de-deux through the beam of the streetlight cutting across the floor. It seems strange for there still to be streetlights, that it isn't daylight yet. He jumbled up hours, huddled in the hospital like a bunker, and he can't seem to put them back into line. "Scotch? I don't know. I never actually thought about it."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"No." He shakes his head, more stung by the phrase than he has any reason to be. "Surprised, not disappointed. I didn't say that."

"Precision in all things," Sam says, almost smiling. "My mistake."

"Precision in quotes at the very least. Otherwise we could get sued." He paces off a slow circle around the living room, noting the titles of scattered books and magazines, frowning at a glass left out without a coaster, smiling despite himself at the CDs given pride of place beside the stereo. Sam has no taste.

He's vaguely aware that Sam sits down on the couch, and gives a slow, shuddering sigh. And yet he's still startled when he looks up from the shelves and Sam is sitting there, closer, head and shoulders bowed in exhaustion. They've gone longer without sleep, and without flinching from lack of it, but this is a different kind of exhaustion, a very particular one, that can only come from the kind of adrenaline-sick terror they've lived through for the past few hours.

He knows that there are things he could and probably should say, comforting half-meaningless babble, reassurances that the President is fine and Josh will be fine and they'll catch the sons of bitches who did this and roast them over hot coals for days, possibly with a commemorative song and dance alongside. Instead he walks to the kitchen, takes the vodka from the freezer and the cleanest glass from the sink, pours until he judges the amount to be _enough_, adds just a splash of juice, and takes it back to rest on the coffee table with a firm click.

"Drink that."

Sam looks up at him, his hand curved over his face in that way he does, that he's never realized reveals as much as it obscures. His eyes are bright over the edge of his hand, enough so that Toby's chest tightens. He's torn, always, between wishing that Sam did know how much he says with his eyes, because no one should go through the world with so much open and raw, and being hopelessly thankful that Sam doesn't know and hasn't learned to hide.

"I'm not sure that's going to help," Sam says, his voice half-caught in the heel of his hand.

"Of course it's going to help." He would like his voice to rise to an outraged shout, but it bends away, coming out rough and choked. He blames Sam's eyes, too bright and peering at him over the long lines of his hand. He blames a lot of things. "That's the whole reason we invented it, is because it helps."

"Maybe you should have it."

"Sam--" The inability of anyone in his life to simply shut up and do what he tells them is one of the great defining grievances of Toby Ziegler, and he's ready to expound on that at length when the words stop themselves, choking off in his throat. It's a sixth sense they've developed, nothing magical but the product of being pressed in close together for so many hours and days and months since Leo lured them all into Bartlet's orbit, a simple awareness of each other, in terms of where and how. _Sam is in his office and he's happy; he's writing and it's going well_, Toby might think, an under the surface knowledge pieced together from faint sounds and flashes of movement glimpsed from the corner of his eye half an hour before and simple familiarity.

Only now it's _Sam is on the couch, very close, and he is not okay; he's sweating again, and his hands are shaking_  
, and Toby's response is immediate, instinctive. He kneels down carefully in front of the couch, ignoring the creaking protest of his back and his knees, and touches Sam's arm again.

"Sam," he says, echoing himself, searching for something to say that wasn't one of the painful, cliched half-lies. "It's going to be..." He falters and then falls back, grasping for the kind of densely archaic rhetoric he would reach for to give words to the President. Careful and formal and slightly, safely abstract, but familiar and comfortable for them both. "All will be well. We are, all of us, alive."

Sam blinks at him, and a smile curves the half of his mouth not hidden behind his hand. "We are," he says, spiderwebs of lines forming around his eyes as they focus on Toby's own, bright and warm with amusement. "But I didn't realize we were doing Shakespeare here, Toby."

"Good." Toby laughs a little, looking down at the fabric of the couch, wishing the tension in his chest would ease a little, just enough to let him draw a deep breath. "That would be a little above my pay grade." He shifts his weight back to stand, gathering himself, and is stopped again by Sam's fingers curving around his wrist, gripping tight--tighter than he expects to feel, enough that his lips part on a huff of surprise--and then Sam is leaning in and kissing him.

He isn't surprised, exactly; or he is, but for only half of the obvious reasons. He's known about Sam for a while, since sometime between the silent acknowledgment of the permanence of their team and the completion of the transition into the White House. It would have been both impossible and impolitic _not_ to know. Sam is the quintessential charming Beltway bisexual, all youth and shine and cocky energy. His liaisons are as discreet as necessary, in Washington terms, which are a great deal more relaxed than any working definition of as discreet as _possible_.

So he isn't surprised that Sam would kiss him, but he's surprised that Sam would kiss _him_, Toby, who has neither the youth nor the energy nor the patience for the rituals of that particular set, who has gone without liaisons discreet or otherwise because he can't imagine a greater waste of his time.

And yet here they are, Sam kissing him and tugging at his wrist, guiding him up onto the couch. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise; this is Sam, after all, all impulse and righteousness, and who it only makes sense would have the same sixth sense for Toby, an awareness of where and how. _Here, very close now indeed, hands sliding and mouth moving rough and hungry--wanting, wanting very much--_

Sam shifts, turning under Toby's weight, leaning back against the arm of the couch and pulling Toby down against him. Their every motion is rough and jerky; this is adrenaline-fueled, rough rubbing and grinding that is absurd for men of their ages and stations. Panic has regressed them both to awkward and frantic and much younger, wanting only to feel and find release from feeling so they can remember how to think.

They're both still dressed in the framework of their suits--rumpled trousers and shirts, ties hanging on with the last shreds of formality--and it's too much fabric to reallyfeel each other. They kiss deeply, frantically, their mouths their only true point of contact. Sam fumbles with Toby's shirt, struggling to pull it free of his trousers and touch skin, but the angle is wrong, the motions too awkward, and Toby finally catches Sam's hands, threading their fingers together to hold them palm to palm with his own and pin them down to the cushions. Sam's palms are rough and abraded from hitting the pavement during the shooting. Toby imagines the cuts must sting from the salt of his own skin.

"God," Sam breathes, tilting his head back. "Jesus." Toby closes his eyes, the sight of Sam's face lit with abandon suddenly something he can't bear. His fingers tighten against Sam's, holding his hands fast, and he kisses the curve of Sam's neck, just above his collar, tasting sweat and the faintest ghosts of soap and cologne, and Sam, Sam, Sam.   
**  
Afterglow has never had much appeal to Toby; it hardly exists in the political world, anyway, and he has converted to the native ways of that world in all of his life. There's always another goal to turn to, another project, another pager going off in harsh reminder that the rest of the world is moving on.

Sam eases himself up into a sitting position, his hands sliding against his trousers in a motion that's half-anxious and half-discreet attempt to tug the fabric away from himself. "Bad news?"

Toby shrugs, careful not to take his eyes from the little screen. "Just wondering where we are, I imagine."

"Phone's right there if you want to tell them we're on our way." Sam stands up slowly, catching the glass of vodka as he moves and downing it in a few quick swallows. Toby lets his eyes trace the arc the glass makes, from table to mouth and back again, and smiles despite himself. "What?"

"I was going to drink that."

Sam waves his arm vaguely. "There's more in the kitchen. Let me grab a coat and we can go."

"I'll go." He holds up his hand to forestall the argument before it makes it past a wrinkle in Sam's forehead. "They only paged me. You...shower, change, then come in."

Hurt flashes in Sam's eyes, and Toby thinks he might have to change his mind about the relative benefits he'd established before in regards to Sam's lack of walls. "Okay."

"It's going to be a long day. I guess you'd probably like clean clothes and maybe to run a comb through your hair." Sam's hand goes automatically to his hair, and Toby bites back a laugh, shoving his pager back into his pocket. "Find me when you get there."

"Don't you want...clean clothes? And a comb?" Sam's voice hesitates just a fraction, betraying a certain emphasis on the words that he wants to mean something else. Toby shifts his weight, uncomfortable, but reminds himself that the guy can't help it. They're in the business of making metaphors.

"They paged _me_," he says, patience and exasperation mingling to neither one's benefit. "And nobody cares about my hair."

"Right," Sam says, too softly, and Toby knows that he's busy reading entirely too much into the failure to take up the metaphor. He desperately wants to make himself that drink, except that security at the White House is going to be somewhere up above red alert and the agents are complete fascists about the smell of booze.

"It's going to be kind of a busy day," he says instead, wincing a little at his own descent into the banal. _Good thing you don't write for a living, Tobias._

"Yeah." Sam nods, glancing away from him. "We'll talk later."

"It's been a crazy night." This is cliche as well, hurtful halting well-worn blocks of words, but he has to say them, has to offer the out. "I'm sure everything is going to look...completely different, in the morning."

Sam's head snaps back around and he stares at Toby with raw surprise. Then his jaw sets, his eyes narrowing, and Toby realizes that he is, in fact, well and truly screwed, because he knows Sam Seaborn, and he just became a Sam Seaborn project. "We'll talk later."

"Probably won't have a chance for a few days," Toby says, but it's a feint, a feeble rearguard gesture.

"I can wait. I'm very patient." Toby's pager buzzes again and Sam takes a step back. "I'll see you at the office. Buzz me if there's any word on Josh or the President."

"You'll be the first to know." He takes the pager from his pocket and stabs at the buttons until it falls quiet, and when he looks up again Sam's left the room.

He lets himself out and steps into the dull, heavy air again, startled to find that it's still dark outside. It feels like more time should have passed. His shirt is damp with sweat under the arms and at the base of his spine, his underwear is clammy and uncomfortable against him, and he's wobbling on his feet, unsteady as if drunk from the sharp end of his adrenaline rush.

The streetlights are glowing steady and quiet and bright, and if he looks up through the haze he can see the window of Sam's apartment. It doesn't make sense that the same night can feel like both the end of the world and the beginning.


End file.
